On July 9, Nagasaki Ekisan (headed by Hideki Nakamura president of Kyushu Air Water) with a capital of 50 million yen which was established jointly by the Air Water Group and Fukuoka Oxygen of the major regional distributor in Kyushu held a plant completion ceremony and an opening reception.

In the Western Kyushu region including mainly Nagasaki, Saga and part of Fukuoka prefectures there has been only one liquid gas plant of Kyushu Industrial Gas (Omuta City, Fukuoka Prefecture). In terms of safety supply it has not seemed to be in perfect condition yet. In the course of discussion between Air Water and Fukuoka Oxygen both of who invest in Kyushu Industrial Gas regarding replacement of its aging plant, they came up with the idea of establishing Nagasaki Ekisan and emerged it to the surface. The newly established plant for Kyushu Industrial Gas’s production capacity of LO + LN will be halved from 4570 m3/h to 2250m3/h, while Ar will increase from 90m3/h to 124m3/h, which will go operation in December of this year the production capacity of GO + GN 4800m3/h will remain as before.

Along with this, they have been constructing a V1 plant for supply to Sony Nagasaki located at Tsukuba–cho of Isahaya City and also a VSU plant having a capacity of LO600m3/h and LN1400m3/h since a year ago in the premises of Kyushu AW where they established Nagasaki Ekisan invested 51% by AW, 30% by Fukuoka Oxygen and 19% by Kyushu AW. In spite of the increase in stable supply capacity brought by the system, the production capacity has rather decreased.

There must be a key to keep the reputation of the VSU technology calling for a high-efficiency operation with the motto of “Local production for Local consumption” to meet regional requirements. The VSU introduced this time has something fresh in its compactness with unification of two cold boxes for separation and liquefaction which is associated into the vacuum insulation layer.

Of course, AW’s VSUA has been employed also in the replaced unit of Kyushu Industrial Gas, and the one for Nagasaki Ekisan marked the 13th VSU. With the remote monitoring system introduced in AW Sakai, an integrated across-the-country means is being implemented for the monitoring system.